


The Standard

by LeoOtherLands



Series: All the Broken Pieces [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Assault, Depression, Flashbacks, M/M, Mental Abuse, Modern Era, Multi, Panic Attacks, Past Kakashi/Rasa, Physical Abuse, Platonic Kakashi/Itachi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rare Pairings, Things don't get better, hopelessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 16:52:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: 'But that's the joke, isn't it? We all go on living, until we can't anymore. Until something stops us.' - AnonymousKakashi knows the joke. Yeah, he knows it pretty damn well. Some nights are just worse than others.





	The Standard

**Author's Note:**

> Reader be warned, this is not a friendly piece...
> 
> Wait in line  
> 'Till your time  
> Ticking clock  
> Everyone stop
> 
> Everyone's saying different things to me  
> Different things to me...
> 
> Do you believe  
> In what you see  
> Motionless wheel  
> Nothing is real  
> Wasting my time  
> In the waiting line  
> Do you believe in  
> What you see
> 
> Nine to five  
> Living lies  
> Everyday  
> Stealing time  
> Everyone's taking everything they can  
> Everything they can...
> 
> Ah and I'll shout and I'll scream  
> But I'd rather not have seen  
> And I'll hide away for another day
> 
> Do you believe  
> In what you see  
> Motionless wheel  
> Nothing is real...
> 
> [Waiting Line - Zero 7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XubfoI68Nqk)

Summer. It was hot. The heat lingering, even after the sun had long gone down, leaving the cement under my feet gray and cracked. Almost sunbaked. Sweat clung to me; sticking my clothes to my skin and rolling in itching drops down my back. The humid air was stifling. Moist. Like a blanket rapping me round, or the fetid breath from the maw of a panting beast huffed over me with each exhale.

Yet, I didn’t want to go in either. I knew the moment I stepped into that too loud space I’d be freezing. The sweat gone cold on my skin; my ears inundated with too much throbbing _sound_. And I’d want to leave. Just as quickly as I’d arrived. My heart turning over and my mind blanking down into silence.

Hands shoved in my pockets, I scuffed at a crack in the paving before casting my eyes over my destination. The Standard was a small bar on _Konoha’s_ main drag known for its variety of martinis. An establishment on the older side of town, it resided in an antique building retrofitted to its new purpose. Long and narrow and wedged in, as it was, between a furniture store and a parking lot, you couldn’t even tell what it was from the outside. Its minuscule sign simply sporting a single S done in brownish tan. I knew, once I walked through that glass front door, the floor would be old, scoffed, worn, but pretty wood, a gleaming bar would spread itself out on the right, and a trinity of square tables would be butted up against the left-hand wall, leaving a narrow walkway to just beyond the bar, where, up three steps, was a puddle of a lounge with couches and a wide, low center table. And all of it under thick, dark-wood beams. Coiling off to the left, around the lounge area, would be a tiled hall leading to the side entrance, on the left, letting on the parking lot, and, further on, to the right, the restrooms.

It was a decent place. I’d been there hundreds of times. It was nice. Fine. Grand. Nothing to be concerned about. No reason for it to leave me gawking on the sidewalk with my heart jacking off in my chest and a dismal feeling sinking through me, threatening to rip my guts out through my heels.

“Kakashi?”

Itachi’s hand was easy on my back, and I glanced back at him. He’d left his hair down, for once. Probably because his boyfriend, Shisui, was in town, and Shisui liked Itachi’s hair that way. The thought prompted my eyes to roam to the man in question. Shisui stood a few feet back from Itachi and a few steps ahead of Itachi’s brother, Sasuke, and Sasuke’s boyfriend, Naruto.

All four of them looked at me with speculative expressions, as though I might fly apart at any moment. Even the normally cheerful blond. Naruto’s whisker-printed cheeks were slack in a concerned set, instead of raised in their typical, smiling bunch.

It made me sick to see them all looking at me like that.

“Are you alright, Kakashi?” Itachi asked.

“I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Can we just go in already?”

Itachi shot a glance at Shisui. “Sure, Kakashi.”

I forced my feet into motion and Itachi slid into step beside me, Shisui taking up position on my other side, and Sasuke and Naruto at my back. Like a defense against the world.

Unfortunately, that only worked until we got to the door and had to go in single file. Once inside, the volume of the place violated me. Tearing at my senses and making me squirm down into a dark, recessed part of my mind where all I could do was stare blank with my teeth clenched and my hands balled to fists.

Itachi ordered my drink for me, after I muttered to him what I wanted. Then we all moved off to the lounge area and squished ourselves onto some of the couches. It was better squeezed into an end of a couch with Itachi beside me. Better with his lean frame pressed up against mine. Better with a drink in my hands. Better when my friends slipped out of concern for me and into conversation, so I could stare at nothing and let the alcohol play at my muscles and thoughts.

Better until Itachi said something to me my dissociated mind didn’t process. I turned wide, round, staring eyes on him, instant and instinctual alert shooting bloody panic through me, wrapping my hazing mind in a state of confusion.

“What?”

Itachi’s face was all soft weariness. “Did you hear me, Kakashi?”

† † †

_“Did you fucking hear me?!”_

_Rasa’s voice attacked my ears, ringing in my suddenly blank mind and pounding at my offended members, until I felt they themselves would like to shrink from the assault. Eyes gone round, I turned slow to face him._

_“Yes.”_

_“Yes what,” he snapped, features darkening. “Yes, you heard me, or yes, we have more fucking chili seasoning?”_

_“Yes, we have more seasoning.” The words were flat. Low. Spoken without inflection, so they wouldn’t have anything in them to further aggravate Rasa. Juggling the box of pasta and the spaghetti scoop, I also attempted to pry the cupboard open. Wishing we didn’t have to do this_ now _. My feet hurt, my face was hot I was so tired, my mind was slow, and I was just all-around sore. Couldn’t we just make dinner and eat, so I could curl up and sleep?_

_The strike came fast, and I tasted blood. Whether because Rasa’s backhand had split my lip or because I’d bit my tongue on the way down or because the floor had taken care of all of that when my face met it, I couldn’t tell. Pasta skittered around me and I blinked, blurry and hazy and wondering if he’d hit me again._

_“Did I ask you to give me the damn seasoning?!” The words were loud in my ears, and I grit my teeth against them, pressing my cheek into the cool linoleum. “I asked if we had more, not for you to get it! What the hell are you doing?! You never listen, Kakashi! I need you to fucking listen! What’s wrong with you?! You’ve had years to get this fucking right and talk to me, now’s time for you to shut up and learn to obey!”_

_His toe nudged me, and I clenched my jaw tighter, to hold myself from moving. “What did I ask you?”_

_“If we had more seasoning.”_

_“And what did you do?”_

_“Tried to get it.”_

_“Why?”_

Because the last time you asked a question like that, you yelled at me for not handing it to you. Because you hit me for leaving you standing at the stove, hanging. Which is it you want? I can’t do both, Rasa…

_Only I couldn’t say any of that. It would be pointless to say the words, and they would only result in another bruise. “I don’t know.” Those words were safe. Or safer._

_“You need to fucking listen! Start by picking up that mess you made.”_

_“Yes.”_

_Rasa went back to the stove, and I pushed myself off the noodle-scattered floor. Really, I considered myself lucky. Crisis averted. I swept up the wasted food and prepped some fresh angel hair. Rasa was snappish and biting, picking at every wrong move I made, heightening my anxiety and clumsiness, if I was honest, but he didn’t hit me again. And, as time went on, he cooled, mellowing into his other self. The one who didn’t reduce me to yes and no answers and asked how my day was with real interest and told me he loved me._

_By the time I’d stowed the leftovers and washed the dishes, Rasa had a video game on one screen and anime on another and was smiling at me when I walked in the living room door. He opened his arms and I crawled into them, accepting the warmth of his chest. And why? Because this was fine. Rasa was laughing. It was safe to sleep. Safe to curl up and drift away and let it all go to hell and to shit._

Just let me sleep.

† † †

“Kakashi? Do you want another drink?”

I realized I was still staring at Itachi and his wariness was turning to concern, and that was the last thing I wanted. I shook my head to dislodge the last of the tangled memories, Itachi’s touch was light on my knee.

“No?”

“Yes!” I heard the volume and note in my own voice and lowered my eyes to that slender hand. “Ahh… Yes, I’d like another drink.”

Itachi nodded understanding, saying nothing about my reactions. “The same thing as before?”

“You could get Blue Balls!” Naruto chimed up; face painted in his normal cheer at last. Well, cheer and a healthy dose of gin.

“Naruto,” Sasuke chided with an unenthusiastic frown.

“No! Seriously, it’s on the menu! See?” The blond held the long, slim, laminated thing out to his partner, and Sasuke took it with a sigh.

“Yes, I see,” Sasuke said, indulgently aggrieved. “It is on the menu, along with Juicy Screw, Karma Sutra, Or-G On the Beach, Passionate Screw, Tie Me to the Bed Post, and Sex on Sundae.”

“I recommend Sex on Sundae,” Shisui said, plucking the menu away from the younger men, and Naruto snickered.

“More like sex all night, given how long you’ve been out of town.”

“Oatmeal Cookie,” I managed, my fingers tightening on my knees, and Itachi nodded, standing.

“Back in a minute.”

I closed my eyes, just breathing. Glad when Itachi came back with my Oatmeal Cookie because I needed something strong and not in the least like an oatmeal cookie. Followed by an Expresso Mint because I needed something that tasted like shit with coffee beans floating in it because mixing caffeine and alcohol was a great plan.

But it was fine. Itachi was next to me and everything was fine.

It was fine even when a long-haired, pleasant-faced man with a scar across the bridge of his nose dropped into the overstuffed chair near my edge of the couch and started chatting amicably with Naruto and Sasuke. The raven and the blond called him professor Iruka and eluded to how his classes had been the most bearable, right up ‘till they’d graduated.

A college instructor than. Nothing to be concerned about, and no need to participate. I let my mind drift away on the heat welling in my belly and suffusing my extremities. It was soothing. No need to think.

No need until Iruka turned to me with a smile and asked the simplest of questions. “And who might you be?” His eyes sparkled and his smile was genuine, but the five words sunk through me like rocks, pulling down every thought in me, stunning me, and tripping me up.

“Ahhh… K-kakashi.”

The man didn’t seem to notice my agitation or hesitation, but Itachi did. I could feel him tense beside me in response to my own stiffening frame. To how my fingers gripped my knees, biting into the fabric. It was honestly a relief to know Itachi was on alert. He’d sweep in to save me on a whim, if I needed it.

The relief and the thought made my jaw clench.

“And how’d you end up out with these intolerables?” Iruka inquired, laughing at the end.

Simple question. Easy question. It shouldn’t have had me casting around for answers as though they were lifelines. No. Not answers. _The right answer!_

“I’m here with Itachi.”

“Oh.”

The wrong answer. Iruka’s eyes shifted around to Itachi and Shisui and back to me. Skeptical. Wondering. _Fuck!_

Itachi’s hand on my shoulder saved me. “Kakashi is my and Sasuke’s roommate,” he said. “We’ve known each other since we were children.” Then he launched into some long tale of _back when_ , which put everyone to laughing and even had me smiling, and it was easier to relax when Itachi was talking.

And didn’t Iruka have a nice smile? When he laughed, his chocolate eyes lit up with a soft glow, and his voice was mellow and settling, and I had a few drinks in me. And Itachi was a tricky bastard. Without my even realizing it, he had me saying a few words to Iruka, here and there, until I was in a full-blown conversation and not even thinking about it. Not until it was too late, and by then…

By then Itachi was handing me another drink, with a soft smile. and I was okay with talking to the brown-haired man with the unusual scar. Yeah. Sure. We could do this. Hold a conversation like a normal person.

It was fine while I sipped my drink and we talked about nothing. Little bits of life with no meaning. Music and movies, work and weariness. Fine until the casually asked question, “So, why isn’t your other half here tonight?”

I could feel myself blanch, blood draining out of my face while my heart beat a sluggish, too fast rhythm.

† † †

_Another assault on my ears, over-loud and furious. Rasa’s words beat at my mind like heart throbs, each one distinct and traceable. Pulses. Pulses that numbed me and blanked me and emptied me, until I was nothing but a shell with burning, sandy eyes and a soul-deep ache slowing my motions to near time-stopped sloughs._

I wish not to be…

_It wasn’t a conscience thought. More a sense, which provided me with the numb ache._

I wish not to be.

Anywhere but here.

Any pain but this.

 _In a way, it was a relief when Rasa hit me, dropping me to the floor of our bedroom. The blood in my mouth a better taste than the words spit at me. The hot, sticky blood in my eyes better than seeing his face twisted with rage and his eyes_ _ferocious and manic. The pain was one I could grasp, one that fell in-line with the ache, and made it less deep. Gave it meaning in crumbling non-existence._

_“Listen!” He grabbed my hair and roared it in my ear. “You never listen, and you don’t fucking talk to me! Five fucking years and you can’t manage the simple things! You can’t get this right! What the hell is wrong with you?!”_

_I wondered if he would slam my head into the floor, but he only ground my face into the carpet a moment and jerked me up to my knees, so he could slap his words directly into my face._

_“If you can’t get this right, you shouldn’t even be in a relationship! You’re inadequate! Completely deficient in everything I need! Unsatisfactory!”_

_My hair was strained upward, and my face pulled millimeters from his lips._

_“Unsatisfactory!”_

_The blare of it made me wince. Maybe once I would have cried. Wept like it could save my life. But after years watching my step, every damn day dodging hidden faults, my tears were spent._ Empty. Just empty. _But it didn’t change the fact Rasa’s insult hurt. Cut worse than the other benedictions oft hauled at me._

Cunt!

Whore!

Bitch!

Stupid!

_“You’re so fucking stupid!”_

_Rasa whipped me around, sending me sprawling into the edge of the bed. I gripped it like an anchor. A place to bury and hide my bruised face. Maybe it would have been better if I could remember what had set this particular episode off. What was it?_

_Out of the numbness it came swimming to me. He’d asked me a question I hadn’t heard. Sought a response I was too slow to give, standing struck still and unable to find the_ right answer _within my shifting, frozen thoughts._

_It hardly mattered anymore. Fumbling at the mattress, I knew all that could be done was to wait. Wait for the storm to pass. Wait for Rasa to cool off. Wait. All I had was time._

_Time and another blow sending me sprawling._

_“Look at you! How can you be this way?! I hate looking at you! I wish I could just kill you!”_

Sure…

_The thought was a drift on swirling darkness._

Sure. You say it, but never do. Years, and the same pattern. Rinse and repeat. The bruises fade and are reapplied to fade again. Sure…

† † †

“Don’t- I don’t… I’m not-”

“You’re single?” Iruka tilted his head, expression clouding and charging with interest all at once.

“I, ah- I…” _I’m going to blank out, fuck!_

Itachi leaned into me, his hot presence pushing me further into the couch’s padding and closer to Iruka all at once, but also easing the thud of my heart. “Currently,” he said, laying his slender hand on mine. His head came to rest on my shoulder and, when I turned to look at him, he gave me a soft smile. I saw he was royally drunk and royally tired.

My chest seemed to swell and my throat to close up, choking me, as a warm wave washed over me. _Fuck, I love you, Itachi…_

Shisui glanced at us, and his face was all light affection. “Getting tired, Itachi?” he asked, skimming a hand over his partner’s back.

“Um-hum,” Itachi hummed against me, and I thought I would suffocate on the feeling burning the back of my throat, even though I knew it was half act. Itachi was never so drunk or worn as he appeared.

With trembling hands, I reached for my drink and downed it. Instantly, I felt the rush of the alcohol flood my head. Dizzy sitting down, I struggled to put my glass back on the table with exaggerated care.

“I, ah, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Ummm…” Itachi opened blurry eyes at me. “Okay. Come back soon,” he added, pushing off me to slump against Shisui, who smiled and wrapped an arm around him.

I found my feet with unsteady, ingrace, and wobbled down the stairs, surprised I could manage it. But I had tripped down those stairs more times than I could count, blind drunk. Just as I’d swayed around the corner and down that hallway, over the black and white octagon tiles, hundreds of times. Legs nerveless, not feeling the floor, almost floating, concentrating far _too hard_ to stay upright and not ricochet off the walls.

The men’s room was empty when I tugged open that black-painted door in the cool, quiet hallway. I appreciated that. I didn’t even have to relieve myself. I just had to stand there in that dim, silent space, and splash water over my hot face. Stand, gripping the basin with my face and hair dripping. Because that hid the tears, didn’t it? No one would be able to tell the hot runnels on my cheeks came from my own eyes.

The lie was easy to tell myself, until the door opened. I looked up from my own scarred reflection in the mirror, expecting to see Itachi, surprised to instead to see Iruka.

The brown-haired man’s face was sad and flushed with too much drink. “I-” He took a step forward and stopped. “I just had to say I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I-” He wracked his hands through his tied-back hair. “I should have just asked if I could buy you a drink.”

I swallowed, but the regret in those melted-chocolate eyes wouldn’t let me ask him to leave. _He’s a nice person, he doesn’t mean any harm…_

I straightened. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Iruka took another step forward and stopped again, head hanging. Taking it as a cue I wouldn’t have much more time, I tried to pace to the door. Only to be called to halt before the other man by his low voice.

“Can I… Buy you a drink, Kakashi?”

My throat was a clogged, parched crack, as I tried to swallow again. I swayed, wanting to be sick, high-pitched thoughts reeling through my mind. _It’s fine! This is fine! This is what people do!_ And didn’t he have pretty eyes, looking up at me with a kind of pleading hope, like I was some beautiful thing he was afraid to lose?

“Yeah. Okay.”

The hope in his eyes burst into happiness and his lips formed a lovely smile. “Thank you, Kakashi.”

A nod. All I could manage. I needed to get out of that enclosed space. Back to Itachi, back where it was safe.

But, somehow… Somehow, he was leaning toward me, and we were both drunk, and his lips were on mine. And, oh god, he tasted like chocolate and gin and heat, and that was nice.

I was spinning toward the door, then thumping against it, and Iruka was there. Our pants intermingled. Iruka’s hands slid down my belly and caught in my waistband. Our eyes met, and he worried his lip as he undid my pants. My back arched when he touched me, then Iruka was on his knees in front of me, his chocolate eyes looking up at me with cloudy contentment. Gratitude.

Every heartbeat throbbed in my ears. Throb and throb-

† † †

_And I was coming out of the bathroom when I saw Rasa stretched out on the bed in nothing but his shirt. His arms behind his head and the V of his legs all too visible. Flushing, I lowered my head, biting the inside of my lip. I made my way to the bed, hoping not to be noticed._

_“Why do you always do that?”_

_My head jerked up. “D-do?”_ Stupid, stupid! Never answer a question with a question!

_But Rasa didn’t seem inclined to be upset about it. He slid off the bed, came up to me, and put his hands on my hips._

_“Wear your briefs to bed. You didn’t used to.”_

_I felt my breathes beginning to pull at my lungs, my eyes dilating and going round. “I- I don’t know.”_ Because I hate it when you look at me…

_Rasa saw what was happening to my body, and chuckled. He hooked his thumbs in my underwear and pulled them down before running his whole hand over me._

_I moaned, even as my mind bucked against it._ Please, no. I don’t want to do this. _But I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say anything because the bruises from yesterday were still drying. Still cooling around my neck and over my back._

 _One set of fingers pushed at my head, while the other snaked around to penetrate me._ Please, no. _But at least this meant Rasa was happy. He only used me when he was happy. And happy meant, when this was done, I could sleep the night. No need to be afraid to sleep. No need to be afraid of what I would find when I woke up._

_Rasa wouldn’t stop fingering me, until I was groaning and squirming because, fuck, he wasn’t gentle. Then he was spinning me around and pushing me down over the edge of the bed, hand in my hair, the other lining himself up for the plunge that made me want to whimper because I wasn’t fully ready._

_Rasa let go of my hair to grip my hips again, to better align me for thrusting into. And all I could do was lie there and take it. Take it with my hands tight in the sheets and my face buried in the bedding, turning back and forth to wipe away the tears, and teeth set around a wad of dry cloth to hold back whatever sounds I would make._

_It_ hurt _. Rasa hadn’t torn me, but it hurt. It was too dry because Rasa didn’t use lube and there wasn’t enough pre-cum and I was tense because I_ didn’t want to!

_The man above me owned every part of my body. He knew just where to hit every time to make me see stars, and soon my legs were trembling, trying to keep my ass in the air for him to ram into. Rasa liked it. He reached around with one hand to tease me, swirling his finger in my slit._

_“Come on, Kakashi. Come for me. I want you to come for me.”_

Don’t want to!

_But, of course, I did. Came hard, clenching tight around him the way he wanted. Like the good whore I was._

_Rasa’s fingers bruised my hip as he pumped his last few jabs into me, then his release was dribbling out of my ass and I had to stop crying because Rasa hated it when I cried. And I just wanted to sleep._ I just want to sleep, damn it!

† † †

Iruka’s lips were soft on me and his tongue was working, and his face was pretty, as he looked up at me from under his lashes, his cheeks still flushed from drink. And I- I-

A shudder went all through me. My eyes were closed, my hands flat against the door behind me, and a keen came out of me that was not pleasure.

Iruka’s mouth was off of me in a moment, his face an open well of concern. “Kakashi? Are you alright? Did I do something wrong?”

I was shaking my head in quick jerks of negation of everything. Of his having done anything, of what I was doing there, of _my life_. I just couldn’t do this!

“I can’t- I just- I can’t do this!”

My motions were quick, straightening my clothes, pushing open the door at my back, leaving Iruka there, on his knees, calling after me.

“K-kakashi!”

I tipped my way back up the hallway, mind asleep and eyes hazed.

“Kakashi?”

I stumbled to a stop, slumping against the side entrance’s doorframe when I raised my eyes to grasp it was Itachi in the ach leading back to the bar. Come to check on me. Come to rescue me. _As always, Itachi…_

And I just couldn’t take it anymore. Just couldn’t take it.

I lurched off the wall and launched myself into the door’s crash bar. The door flew open, and I staggered out onto the small stoop, guarded by a thin, black metal rail. Dazed, I tripped my way down the four or five stairs to the parking lot before falling. The cement step slapping my ass hard when I sat on it, putting my face in my hand and weeping like a child.

“Kakashi!”

Itachi bolted through the door and down the steps to drop beside me, wrapping me in his arms and his scent. Like rest and nighttime. Like lilacs after dark. I buried my face in his shoulder and let myself weep because Itachi never told me not to cry.

“Kakashi, what is it? What happened?”

I shook my head against him. “I can’t! I just can’t! I can’t do it again! I can’t-”

† † †

-breathe!

 _Rasa’s hands were around my neck. It wasn’t the first time, but this time was different. A bright light of panic was spreading through me because I couldn’t_ breathe _, and Rasa wasn’t letting up, and I couldn’t_ move _with his weight pressing on me. And he was screaming at me. Words I couldn’t even hear under the droning throb of my own heart in my ears, couldn’t understand, except… Except… Something about, “So far below the standard!”_

 _Yes. Yes, I was worthless, and I’d offended him, and he was punishing me. Except- Except I couldn’t_ breathe. _Not even enough to say his name and beg him to stop._

_Then he was hitting me, and I was gasping and trying to see through watering eyes. Trying to see… To see the glint of steel in Rasa’s hand._

_I cried out, managing to deflect the first blow, though it tore across my face, almost putting out my left eye. Then it was struggle. Struggle to keep that spike of metal from plunging into me. Struggle I couldn’t win and couldn’t manage, then nothing but pain._

_Pain and Itachi’s voice. Shouting and thumps and shattering glass._

_And Itachi. Itachi with blood on his hands and face next to me, pleading into his cell phone to tell them, for the love of god, to hurry. Then Itachi falling on my chest, weeping, begging me to not go to sleep. For the love of god, Kakashi, please don’t go to sleep!_

_I wanted to tell him okay, I’d try to stay awake, but I was so damn tired and cold, and I just wanted to sleep. Wanted to sleep so damned much._

_Then there was nothing but darkness, until I woke feeling so weighted and numb it was as though I had no body. Woke in a room where machines hissed and wheezed and beeped to tell me I was still alive._

_Itachi was asleep on my chest, his dark hair fanned out over me like a growing plume of blood in the dim room. Shisui struggled in an uncomfortable sleep on a recliner chair, next to the younger man, and Sasuke and Naruto sat slumped together, supporting each other, on a hard bench-seat under the thick-pained window._

_I was tied down by wires and tubes and weariness, so I could not even wipe away the tears running freely down my cheeks. Because it was partly my fault. I_ had _been selfish. I had never listened. I had never learned to talk to Rasa. And it was all over, and there was nothing I could do, and I didn’t think I could ever do it again. Could ever be in a relationship again._

† † †

“I can’t,” I whimpered into Itachi’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, it’s alright,” he intoned, rocking me like a child. Running his hands over my back. “I have you, Kakashi, it’s alright.”

Above us, the side entrance’s heavy-metal door opened again. Shisui stood, one foot in, one out, hand braced to hold the barrier open.

“Itachi?” His eyes slid to me, softened. “Do you need some help?”

My friend shook his head, not stopping his gentle, rocking rhythm. “No. Stay here with Naruto and Sasuke. I’m going to walk Kakashi home.”

Shisui nodded and stepped back into The Standard, letting the door squeak shut after him. Itachi kept holding me, whispering soft words, not rushing me to calm down. “When you’re ready, we’ll go,” was all he said. And I nodded against him, drying my tears on him because Itachi wouldn’t care.

“So sorry,” I moaned. “So sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Kakashi. You just need time. Things will get better in time.”

I nodded again but said nothing because sometimes there was no getting better. Sometimes all you could do was keep breathing, until you couldn’t anymore. Couldn’t because every breath hurt too damn, fucking much.

**Author's Note:**

> It's easier to run  
> Replacing this pain with something numb  
> It's so much easier to go  
> Than face all this pain here all alone
> 
> Something has been taken from deep inside of me  
> A secret I've kept locked away  
> No one can ever see  
> Wounds so deep they never show  
> They never go away  
> Like moving pictures in my head  
> For years and years they've played
> 
> Sometimes I remember the darkness of my past  
> Bringing back these memories I wish I didn't have  
> Sometimes I think of letting go and never looking back  
> And never moving forward so there'd never be a past
> 
> If I could change I would take back the pain I would  
> Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
> If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
> If I could take all the shame to the grave I would  
> If I could change I would take back the pain I would  
> Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
> If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
> I would take all the shame to the grave
> 
> Just washing it aside  
> All of the helplessness inside  
> Pretending I don't feel misplaced  
> Is so much simpler than change
> 
> It's easier to run...
> 
> [Easier to Run - Linkin Park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_aTbmz7zY)
> 
>  
> 
> I am an original fiction author and fan fiction writer who literally lives for comments, even if they are nothing but inarticulate vowel screams. Please give me comments people! I will literally beg for them!
> 
> This salty ball of words exists on a flotilla of social media. Feel free to friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066,
> 
> Find me on Facebook on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction,
> 
> Or follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands)
> 
> I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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